Sunday: Hili dialogue

It’s Ceiling Cat’s day: November 26, 2017. and also National Cake Day (cats don’t like cake, though I bet one reader has a cake-eating cat). It’s also Anti-Obesity Day, and tomorrow I’ll fast in its observance. But today I have a piece of sweet potato pie.

Historical events seem to slow down in the winter, perhaps because it was cold (but only in the Northern Hemisphere!). Deaths, too, seem to be sparser, but I’m sure there are data bearing on that. On November 26, 1778, Captain Cook and his crew became the first Europeans to visit Maui. On this day in 1789, George Washington proclaimed a “national thanksgiving day” at Congress’s request; and on the same day in 1863, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed November 26 a national Thanksgiving Day to be observed on the final Thursday of November. (Now, by decree of Franklin D. Roosevelt, it’s the fourth Thursday, for November can have five Thursdays.) On this day in 1970, an unimaginable 1.5 inches (3.8 cm) of rain fell in ONE MINUTE in Basse-Terre, Guadeloupe, the heaviest rainfall ever recorded on this planet. Can you imagine what that was like? Read more about this record here. Finally, on this day in 2004, as reported by Wikipedia, “The last Poʻouli (Black-faced honeycreeper) dies of avian malaria in the Maui Bird Conservation Center in Olinda, Hawaii, before it could breed, making the species in all probability extinct.” However, Wikipedia also reports two birds were sighted in the wild that year, though none have been seen since. Here is a live one, and it’s just very sad:

Black-faced honeycreeper (Melamprosops phaeosoma)

Notables born on November 26 include John Harvard (1607), William Cowper (1731), Bat Masterson (1853), Norbert Wiener (1894), Ruth Patrick (1907), Tina Turner (1939), and John McVie (1945). Those who crossed the Rainbow Bridge on this day include Isabella I, queen of Castile and Léon (1504), Daniel Purcell (1717), and Tommy Dorsey (1956).

Here are four tweets sent by Twitterfiend Matthew, the first showing an amazing fossilized bees’ nest:

Sediments surrounding a bee’ nest filled in its original structure, and even though that original structure got lost, this inner mould, which is around 90 million years old, allows recognize its shape. #FossilFridaypic.twitter.com/gd6vh8mXQb

“…Abraham Lincoln proclaimed November 26 a national Thanksgiving Day to be observed on the final Thursday of November. (Now, by decree of Franklin D. Roosevelt, it’s the fourth Thursday, for November can have five Thursdays.)”

Does anyone know the reasoning behind FDR’s decision to make this slight alteration? It seems like a completely useless change, but perhaps I’m missing something.

…his plan was to establish the holiday on the next-to-last Thursday in the month instead of the last one. With the country still in the midst of The Great Depression, Roosevelt thought an earlier Thanksgiving would give merchants a longer period to sell goods before Christmas. Increasing profits and spending during this period, Roosevelt hoped, would help bring the country out of the Depression.

On this day in 1970, an unimaginable 1.5 inches (3.8 cm) of rain fell in ONE MINUTE in Basse-Terre, Guadeloupe, the heaviest rainfall ever recorded on this planet.

(Yet) one (other) thing I like to annoy creationists about. Since the highest mountain is about 29,000 feet, the “fact” that it was completely covered in 40 days and 40 nights means that the rain fell at a continuous average rate of six inches per minute for that entire time.

And we’re supposed to believe that a boat made entirely of wood, and loaded with pandas, ichneumon wasps, tigers, and 3,500 species of mosquitos floated serenely all that time, *and* that the resultant water (approximately three times the volume of what is currently in the oceans) just drained away afterward, and left a still alive and growing olive tree!

“On this day in 1789, George Washington proclaimed a “national thanksgiving day” at Congress’s request; and on the same day in 1863, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed November 26 a national Thanksgiving Day to be observed on the final Thursday of November. (Now, by decree of Franklin D. Roosevelt, it’s the fourth Thursday,”

I have been wanting a better answer to “when was the first Thanksgiving”. I’m going to say year 1789, or 26 November 1863, unless Roosevelt’s decree was retroactive which I doubt.

… meaning of course, it makes as much sense to say it was held at Plymouth Plantation in 1620 as it does to say it was held in 1619, 1500, 1, 1 BCE etc.. it takes too much writing to express how bad it is to keep up the pretense, especially without sounding like One Of Those Guys…

If you’ve ever heard an adult suggest that the first thanksgiving was literally held at Plymouth Plantation, …

We were discussing the origins of mince pie and I suddenly realized – now, without fact-checking this : Puritans thought themselves above the idolatry of Christmas, and refused to celebrate it. They made mince pies for – what, not Christmas, like everyone else -for something else – that something else became Thanksgiving.